Guest editorial: challenges and opportunities of elearning and blended learning during COVID-19 - Part 1

In December 2019, our lives transformed incessantly, as a new virus – a secret and unknown enemy – named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), interrupted and disturbed the lives of people world-wide. The spread of the secret virus affected and impacted all the sectors including the education. Currently world-wide, the education sector is facing a huge impact as a result of the COVID-19, with universities forced to shift their teaching to e-learning and blended learning modes. Academics have had to adapt to this change, both by way of teaching and the assessment process. This has generated several challenges and opportunities for both academics and students. This special issue aims to investigate, assess and examine academics’ perspectives and perceptions with regard how they have handled this challenge as well as highlighting any opportunities and challenges they have experienced during this period. This new issue will add a new theoretical and practical significance to the e-learning literature review, as currently academics are facing new challenges and opportunities by changing their teaching mode from blend teaching to pure e-learning from the COVID-19. This special issue explored the following themes, namely, teaching mode, e-Learning, blended Learning and collaborative technology. The special issue is comprised of seven papers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Does 'MP3' audio feedback enhance students' learning skills?: An international case study

Feedback in higher education, via either traditional or technology approaches, is essential to promote students' skills and knowledge. This study aims to assess students’ responses to the lecturer’s ‘MP3’ audio feedback in four postgraduate units in Australia and Portugal. Two methods are used to provide feedback to the students: traditional and audio ‘MP3’ feedback. The former tracks via a Microsoft word application system, giving academics the chance to include comments regarding what went wrong, and how things might be improved in terms of the topic, structure, layout, style, referencing, grammar and syntax, and proofreading requirements embedded within the assessment. The ‘MP3’ approach, on the other hand, recodes the feedback message using the free software ‘Audacity’. This ‘MP3’ contains a personalized message highlighting the good and bad points, and provides suggestions for improving the final submission. This study provides empirical evidence based on three sources: informal and formal student feedback, and an online survey. The 184 students who participated in the study appeared to be pleased and quite satisfied with the ‘MP3’ audio assessment feedback approach as their learning outcomes and their writing, research, listening, and technology skills were enhanced

Guest editorial: technology mobility

This special issue of Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society entitled Technology Mobility, comprises seven papers that provide cutting edge information and knowledge of ethics, ICT knowledge, e-government services, social media and security. The guest editors invited the first paper, selected papers 2–5 from the IADIS 9th International Conference on Internet Technologies & Society 2019 and 6th International Conference on Educational Technologies 2019 which was held in Hong Kong, and included the two last papers, originally submitted to the regular issue, owing to their adequacy to the topics of this special issue. The papers from the conferences have been extended significantly and peer-reviewed further to achieve a final high publication standard.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Guest Editors’ Introduction-Special Issue on Digital Society and E-Technologies

It is evident that E-Technology (i.e. The Internet, social media… etc.) play a significant role in maintaining and supporting our digital society in various sectors from business, education, health and government and others. E-Technologies are now available worldwide for numerous numbers of universal users to increase collaboration, communication, interaction, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving in developing and developed countries. It is anticipated, and there is evidence gathering that E-technologies use will increase work performance, productivity, innovation, workers’ satisfaction, reduce cost and maintenance. On the other hand, adopting e-technologies will bring various negative aspects in relation to security, privacy, legal aspects and users’ frustration, as majorities of these e-technologies are still neglecting important aspects, i.e. Human Computer Interaction and usability. It is anticipated that these aspects will assist to improve the system functionality, which can be used efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily by universal users, including people with disability

Racionalidade em estratégia organizacional: considerações acerca do desenvolvimento regional

No presente artigo, verificamos qual o tratamento dispensado à conceituação da estratégia organizacional nas abordagens da escolha estratégica que vincule o setor público e privado. A metodologia usada foi a identificação de critérios postos de modo descritivo, a partir do exame do quadro referencial de cada abordagem focalizada, utilizando-se, para isso, do esquema hipotético-dedutivo, movido pelo nexo preditivo, para se chegar a uma síntese provisória. Os resultados obtidos revelam que nas abordagens das escolhas estratégicas genéricas são considerados os indivíduos a partir da organização globalizada que vincula o local e o regional desde aspectos arbitrários. A orientação da ação é predominantemente objetiva visando à vantagem competitiva, o que pode não ser sustentável. A conclusão apresentada formula aspectos concernentes à estratégia organizacional de enfoque, uma vez que nesta perspectiva são considerados mais concretamente o local e o regional como elementos de diálogo administrativo da organização dos bens e serviços provenientes dos processos produtivos